FROM THE EDITOR: The difficult job of reporting the news

Sunday

Feb 28, 2010 at 12:01 AM

Most of what a newspaper does is neutral, neither good news nor bad.

Most of what a newspaper does is neutral, neither good news nor bad.

We report about the financial and political decisions of school boards, city councils and boards of selectmen. We write about the upcoming events so that you can plan how to spend your leisure time. We cover local sports, from fishing to boys' and girls' basketball, to track and wrestling, tennis and swimming.

We spend hundreds of hours of reporter, photographer and editor time writing profiles of the volunteers whom we honor as SouthCoast communities' men and women of the year.

We report about the fishing industry that pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the community, the effort of UMass-Dartmouth to launch the state's first public law school, the long process of building a commuter rail link between New Bedford/Fall River and Boston; and we study the various proposals to build a casino here should the Legislature pass a bill allowing gambling in Massachusetts.

We do public service reporting about how the Parker Street "burn dump" came to be and what remains of its toxic legacy in our schools and our neighborhoods, and on the political and economic forces that drove thousands of illegal immigrants from Central America to New Bedford.

We publish stories of heartbreak, too: from a boating accident that ends in the death of a well-known local man on a lovely summer day to the sinking of one of our port's fishing vessels and the lives lost.

And we cover crime, from the murder spree that began with a 19-year-old New Bedford man's attack on a gay bar in the city, to a 24-year-old murder case that finally ended last week in a conviction, to the criminal case against a city man accused of mutilating his girlfriend's baby.

In those stories, which we are bound to cover, we take no joy. We try to get the facts straight and present the information about crime and punishment as dispassionately as we can, even though those stories are hard to read and harder to report.

There is no joy for us in talking to the friends and family of a young woman gunned down in midday on a city street as the result of a simmering dispute between former friends. There is no pleasure in reporting about the murder of a Cape Verdean wife and mother as she slept in her own bed just days after her son was arrested for the murder of a rival gang member.

But it is part of the job.

And when a case occurs involving someone of standing in the community, especially in a position of trust and importance, then we are bound to report the facts, even when there is strong pressure from powerful people in the community not to do so.

Such was the case involving the arrest last week of a lieutenant in the New Bedford Police Department, who was charged in connection with a domestic disturbance involving another man.

The lieutenant was placed on administrative leave and had to surrender his weapon after his supervisors brought charges.

Several influential people asked us not to report the story because the lieutenant had not told his family about what had happened or that he had a relationship with another man.

It was a difficult decision because we knew it would be painful and embarrassing for a police lieutenant with whom we maintained a good working relationship and for a department whose work and effectiveness we greatly respect.

We decided to report the story in Thursday morning's newspaper rather than posting it immediately Wednesday on our Web site, SouthCoastToday.com, because we wanted to give the lieutenant the chance to speak with his family before they learned about it in the newspaper.

It was not our decision to bring charges against him. That decision was made by the police themselves. We would not have reported the story unless criminal charges had been brought, but had we failed to publish a story whose details were included in public court documents, we would rightly have been accused of a cover-up.

Often, people who are accused of crimes ask us not to report about what happened because it will hurt their families or their employment, so if we make an exception for one person in a position of influence, should we not make exceptions for all who ask? If we do that, we surrender any claim to independent fair-mindedness.

That would be bad not only for us, but for you and the communities that we serve.

Bob Unger is editor of The Standard-Times. He can be reached by email at runger@s-t.com or by phone at (508) 979-4430.